


~ The Last Fires of Autumn ~

by Spiced_Wine



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Comments disabled as this is an older fic uploaded from Faerie, Gen, Imladris, Mention of Slash, Mention of canon characters - Freeform, Pre War of the Ring, Slash, Tormented Elrohir, Tormented Tindómion, cross-over of ‘verses, gift-fic, mention of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:34:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28069380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiced_Wine/pseuds/Spiced_Wine
Summary: This was written as a gift-fic for Ziggy, based on her depiction of Elrohir in the marvellousThe Sons of Thunderseries.Ziggy had written Tindómion intoMore Dangerous, Less Wise(This chapter onward)https://archiveofourown.org/works/616888/chapters/3039751She wrote Tindómion wonderfully, so I hoped I could depict her beautiful and tormented Elrohir.The mention of Erestor being pro-Fëanorian is in Ziggy’s work. The headcanon of Gildor being Finrod’s son is borrowed from Encairion. Tindómion’s history and character is from my own ‘verse.Although I write Tindómion as speaking archaic (Thou, etc) as Ziggy doesn’t in her fic, I didn’t use it in this gift-fic.Realised I uploaded this to Faerie, but never to AO3.Mentions of slash, of violence, therefore rated mature.References to Ziggy’s work and my own so knowledge of both verses required.Comments turned off as this has been up a few years on Faerie!
Kudos: 14





	~ The Last Fires of Autumn ~

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ziggy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziggy/gifts).
  * Inspired by [More Dangerous, Less Wise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/616888) by [ziggy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziggy/pseuds/ziggy). 



> This was written as a gift-fic for Ziggy, based on her depiction of Elrohir in the marvellous _The Sons of Thunder_ series. 
> 
> Ziggy had written Tindómion into _More Dangerous, Less Wise_ (This chapter onward) 
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/616888/chapters/3039751
> 
> She wrote Tindómion wonderfully, so I hoped I could depict her beautiful and tormented Elrohir. 
> 
> The mention of Erestor being pro-Fëanorian is in Ziggy’s work. The headcanon of Gildor being Finrod’s son is borrowed from Encairion. Tindómion’s history and character is from my own ‘verse. 
> 
> Although I write Tindómion as speaking archaic (Thou, etc) as Ziggy doesn’t in her fic, I didn’t use it in this gift-fic. 
> 
> Realised I uploaded this to Faerie, but never to AO3. 
> 
> Mentions of slash, of violence, therefore rated mature.
> 
> References to Ziggy’s work and my own so knowledge of both verses required. 
> 
> Comments turned off as this has been up a few years on Faerie!

** ~ The Last Fires of Autumn ~ **

_ TA 317 9 October Glorfindel and other High Elves leave Rivendell in search of the Ring-bearer. _

~ Summer always lingered late in Elrond’s gardens. Flowers still bloomed here, though outside in the world the leaves were taking on their autumn hues. 

Even here, yellow and russet tinged the woods. A few leaves, early fallen, whispered across the balcony like the ghost of a woman’s skirts passing in the night. To the East, the shaggy pine forests rose toward the bare peaks of the Towers of Mist. On the highest, the first snows had already fallen. The last sun painted them an ominous red. 

And beyond the mountains — war. 

They had know for many years that Sauron was rising again in power. Gondor was threatened; there was news out of the South and East of armies on the move. Only waning Gondor stood between Mordor’s power (and Sauron’s hand stretched far across the world, moving his pieces for the final game) and, when it fell, his Eye would turn West to the few dwindling pockets of Elven resistance: Lothlórien, Imladris, the Havens, the Great Wood itself with a shadow lying over it. 

Sauron would overrun them as the seas had overrun lost Númenor. He would not go unopposed, but at the last, he would overcome. 

Tindómion remembered the sickness in his gut when Mithrandir came to Imladris and revealed that the One Ring had been found.  Ash Nazg . In a series of unlikely, almost impossible events (that Mithrandir seemed to find hopeful) it had been found under the Hithaeglir by Bilbo Baggins, the Hobbit whom had first come to Imladris with a party of Dwarves one spring many years ago.

Those dwarves went to to reclaim their ancient home of Erebor, though Thorin, and his nephews Fili and Kili had been slain. Bilbo had passed again through Imladris on his return but Tindómion had been on a winter patrol and not seen him. The Hobbit had been carrying the Ring then, and Tindómion wondered if he would have felt anything, if Elrond or Glorfindel or Erestor had sensed some wolfspaw of prescience stroke up their spines. All of them had seen the Ring glowing hot, poisonous gold, on Sauron’s armoured hand as he came from Barad-dûr on that last, terrible day of battle. The metal seemed to warp the air about it as had that other ring, ‘prentice work, in Ost-in-Edhil... 

_’Power calls to power, and it is in thy blood. With this, Gil-galad will become the greatest king in all Arda. He may do as he pleases, and none will dare to say him nay. Neither his bloodline nor thine lacks courage, son of Maglor. Wilt thou not grasp it? It is a great gift.’ His voice became silk and soft fire. ‘Fëanor went mad; so much brilliance lost forever, thy father wanders in despair not even knowing he begot a son. Thou wilt loose thy mind if thou dost deny thyself, if thy father does not pay in blood for his violation of thy mother – and then what is left for thee but regret for things never tasted, never done?’_

Tindómion raised his hands to his face, a shudder in his gut. He let it run out of him, took a deep breath and carefully lowered his hands. 

Across the room, his armour hung upon a stand. Only four people in Imladris owned armour out of the Elder Days: Elrond, whom had been Gil-galad’s herald, Erestor, whom had followed Maedhros, Glorfindel, and he, Tindómion. The tall forward-sweeping helm glinted in the lamplight, adorned by brave scarlet plumes. But he would not wear this armour tomorrow when he left Imladris for Amon Sûl; they were to ride swift and secret, those Elrond was sending out. Somewhere between here and Bree, Aragorn was leading Bilbo Baggins nephew, Frodo, through the wilds. With the One Ring. 

And the Nazgûl were abroad. 

Tindómion did not ask Elrond how he knew this; he bore Vilya, and Mithrandir, though it was known only to a few, had carried Narya since Círdan gifted it to him long ago. The Three were linked in some way, but the secret of how, had died with their maker. 

He lifted the sword he had been cleaning, watched the run of light down the runes.  I am Gurthdur, death of the dark. Celebrimbor had made this, too. 

_’All blades have characters. Some are eager, some unwilling, some long for blood and others love to dance in contest. Gurthdur will drink blood, son of Maglor, it waits for the testing. As dost thou.’_

And the testing had come. In blood, and pain and, at the end, in a grief that still crippled his soul. 

When Mithrandir announced the emergence of the One, Tindómion had looked at Elrond, then walked out of the chamber without a word. He did not trust himself. That  damned Isildur. Elrond should have cast him into the Cracks of Doom in Orodruin with the Ring in his greedy and already corrupted fist. Had Tindómion been at hand, he would have done so. But he had been wounded and mad with loss. And now,  now ...! If Sauron gained the One... 

Did he know? Could he feel it?  Why else would the Uláiri be hunting in these northern lands ? 

He strode restlessly to the balcony, hearing the roar of Bruinen as the first storm waters off the mountains swelled its torrent. A light mist hovered over the lawns. 

It had taken Glorfindel to bring him to any kind of calm. Erestor, sympathetic (while placing the blame wholly on Isildur) would have fanned the flames of his rage with that very sympathy, and knew it. 

Glorfindel was the reason he had come to Imladris. Glorfindel had found him in Lindon, half-insane with grief, searching for one gone to dust, gone to the Void, and lead him back toward sanity. But not to acceptance, never. 

Tindómion had become a commander of Imladris under Glorfindel, but his loyalty was not to Elrond. They had been friends once, in Lindon, but Mordor had set a contempt in Tindómion’s heart that nothing could erase. He avoided Elrond, took his orders from Glorfindel. When she was alive, Celebrían had bridged the chasm, but she was long gone, poor lady. Tindómion had loved her like a brother, and she often chose him to accompany her to Lothlórien when she visited her parents — until she came to admit that he and Galadriel invariably rubbed against each other like sandpaper.

He was, for all his hatred of his father,  too Fëanorion. And whatever Galadriel might have felt for her kinsmen in Valinor, the Kinslaying at Alqualondë and the betrayal of her brother Finrod, had burned it to ash. And so, when Celebrían’s small party was attacked, when she was tormented, brutalised by orcs, Tindómion had not been there. Galadriel blamed him for that. He blamed himself.

Elrond’s sons, however, did not. Elrond’s sons were nothing like their father or mother. With Glorfindel and Erestor, he had the training of them in their youth.

A movement brought his head around, a tall man ran up the steps to the long verandah. A stray gleam of light caught the long horsetail of black hair as it swayed.

If Glorfindel were the reason Tindomion had come to Imladris, there were two other reasons why he stayed.

They were so alike in appearance, the twins, yet their energy was completely different. Elladan was a starfield of calm, blue light. His brother was a crimson storm.

After Celebrían’s departure, something had broken in Elrohir, but it was not a break that weakened him, rather it was like a crack in the earth releasing lava from its fuming heart.

‘Istelion,’ Elrohir said.

So few called him that name, the name Gil-galad had given him under a starlit sky so long ago.

‘ _Silver Light. It is an old word. I have only heard it once, from a Loremaster who was of Doriath. Thine eyes. I was wondering what epessë would suit thee. Istelion, son of Silver Light. Since Fanari named thee for the time thou wert born, when the stars fade but Eärendil still shines, that seems fitting. Wilt thou have this name of me, my friend?_ _’_

‘Come in,’ he said.

Tall, slim, always perilous, Elrohir strode into the chamber. He was in black, the mane of black hair caught up. Tindómion never said so to him, but whatever alchemy of blood had come through the twins breeding, they looked Finwëion to the bone. In the dreams he shared through his father, lost, gone, yet alive somewhere in the world, Tindómion had seen the House of Finwë and its magnificent, doomed scions. The shape of the face, the high, sweeping cheekbones, the straight nose and scroll of the mouth, that tall, arrogant carriage — all Finwëion. And sometimes, heartbreakingly, a turn or expression brought Gil-galad out of the Dark.

It seemed Elrohir had also inherited their self-destructive fire. And it was eating him from the inside out. Tindómion, familiar with desires that must needs be curbed, thought (at least sometimes) that Elrohir needed an outlet for his passions that was not slaughter. 

It was a disgrace, Tindómion considered, that Elrond adhered so closely to the same Laws that had made Gil-galad’s court so toxic. Not that gossip or disapproval would have weighed with Tindómion or the High King, but their closeness had almost cost Gil-galad his throne. Perhaps Elrond, though he had stood with Gil-galad, had decided that it was easier (for him) to pay lip service to the Laws. Easy enough, when one desired only the opposite sex!

But the atmosphere in Imladris was certainly not the same as in Lindon; it was not scandalous to take a lover of one’s own gender, but one must be discrete. And so Tindómion was, the rare times he invited any man to his bed. More often he would ride out to the Wandering Companies, to Gildor, lovely son of Finrod* whom, like him, cared nothing for the Laws. There was respect between them, not love, but desire enough, and a shared sorrow. Most of the time, though, Tindómion was chaste.

Elrohir reminded him of himself, crushing down his passion, burning, burning, until he was consumed by his own hunger.

And since Celebrían, whatever twisted within Elrohir, scorched deeper. He took no lovers, at least none that he acknowledged, certainly not in Imladris and Tindómion, though he could desire such beauty and wounded brilliance was shackled by his own morals; he had known the twins since their birth; they trusted him. He could, however, be a friend, and so he was, yet he did not know what gnawed at Elrohir like acid. He wondered if even Elladan knew. And what use is a friend if he cannot help?

He poured two cups of wine and offered one. Elrohir took it and drank, then disposed his long limbs in a chair.

‘You leave tomorrow?’

Tindómion nodded. ‘At first light.’

‘Elladan and I will go with you to the Last Bridge, then we head south.’

‘Your company is always welcome.’

Elrohir threw him a faint smile, but it soon faded. He looked down into the cup. The fire crackled, the long drapes stirred in the mild breeze. Finally, he spoke: ‘What will you do,’ he murmured, ‘when war comes?’ 

‘What I have always done, what you have always done.’ Tindómion took a drink of wine, light, dry, frosty against his tongue. 

‘You would not leave, if all was lost?’ 

Elrohir had pale grey eyes, like polished quartz, hard, brilliant. They could blaze like white fire. They did so now. 

‘Never,’ Tindómion vowed. ‘How could you think it?’ 

Elrohir shifted. ‘I did not. But there is talk of fear, Erestor says, among the servants.’ 

‘That is understandable; they are not warriors. I have vowed to stand with Glorfindel. And if he seeks the Havens and the West then still I will remain.’ He had no trust in the Valar; if he went to Valinor it would be kicking and screaming against the pull of Mandos on his spirit. 

There was another time of silence. Tindómion drew his half armour onto his lap, checking (again) the rivets, the buckles, the supple leather. 

‘Will you attend the Council father will hold?’ 

‘I will not.’ With dour amusement. ‘I have not been asked.’ He wiped his hands on a cloth. ‘I suppose because of Ost-in-Edhil, the ring Sauron gave to me. I have been tempted once,’ he said dryly, ‘I could be again.’ 

Elrohir reached out to grip his wrist. ‘Tempted, but you did not fall.’ The long black lashes swept down to cover his eyes. The grip seemed to tighten. Tindómion watched him as he said, as if he forced the words: ‘Have you never fallen into temptation, Istelion?’ 

‘I did fall into it,’ he answered. ‘for a while. And I will tell you this: I wish I had taken that ring, I  wish — ’ He pressed a fist to his brow, felt Elrohir’s hand loosen, move to his shoulder. His aura burned a dangerous crimson but no softness could have soothed Tindómion’s soul. ‘Sauron is a Maia who existed before Time, but he does not sit in judgement over the halls of Mandos. If the Ring offered to give me Gil-galad back, it would be a lie. I will not believe it.’  Although I would wish to.

‘Yes.’ Elrohir’s voice was sprung taut. ‘I understand.’ 

Tindómion took a deep breath, another, waited until the hard pound of his heart settled a little. 

‘And I wish I understood,’ he said, quietly. ‘Because I think you refine too much upon temptation, my friend, upon what is perceived, still, by some, as  sin. ’ he saw colour strike the high cheekbones like a brand. ‘Elrohir, we are not creatures of light and love and purity. We feel fury and hate and the desire for revenge. You know this. You fought in the Wars against Angmar. You have heard Erestor speak of Maedhros —‘ 

‘That was before—‘ He clipped the unspoken words off with a snap of white teeth. Tindómion finished for him, silently: Before his mother was taken. They had all been horrified and deeply grieved that she could not be healed, had taken the road to the Havens, but with Elrohir it went deeper. 

‘But are we not supposed to be...better than that?’ Elrohir paced to the balcony. 

‘Who says so?’ Tindómion almost laughed, and Elrohir flicked one hand, tossed his head as if to dislodge some thought. He said: ‘Battle lust...’ His voice faded and came back, choked. ‘It is orcish.’ 

‘We are not orcs, but it is said that they were once Elves, corrupted by Morgoth.’ He thought of his father’s dreams, of a woman birthing a monstrosity. Maglor had slain her, quickly, mercifully. She was in agony, poisoned, could never have survived. He thrust the image away. ‘Elrohir, no Elf, no Man, no Dwarf who can feel any emotion is immune from lust, from hate.’ He chose his next words with care. ‘And because, when we fight, we are filled with hate, and are so close to death, we reach toward  life , toward that which is a negation of death. And what is lust, what is sex, but that?’ 

He saw the long, convulsive shudder run through Elrohir, and came to his feet. ‘I wish you had not been indoctrinated to believing such things are wrong.’ 

Elrohir whirled to face him. His face was white, his eyes aflame, feverish, as if he suffered some festering wound. ‘I do not think  you are wrong!’ 

‘Good,’ Tindómion responded with a faint smile. ‘Because I do not think I am, either. You know what I am, what my tastes are. I feel no shame for them.’ 

‘But you are discrete.’ It was almost accusing. 

Tindómion shrugged. ‘Well, but there are few in Imladris I would bed,’ he said truthfully. They had to have that  quality , passion, fire, transcendent beauty. In the Valley, Erestor possessed it, Glorfindel and the twins, no-one else. There were some in the Wandering Companies and in the Havens, but few, these days. It was as if a slow dying afflicted the Noldor, a canker set in their souls since the Last Alliance. 

‘And I would never speak of it, anyhow,’ he added. That was an unspoken rule. 

Elrohir tugged at his black tunic. ‘Our father hates it, I have tried to—‘ 

‘Elrond can go the Hells,’ Tindómion flashed. ‘I would think him wiser than to uphold the damned Laws of the thrice-damned Valar! Such things cannot be banned or  cured as if they were some mortal disease. His own foster-father Maedhros loved Fingon, and that is no tale, my mother knows it, Glorfindel and Erestor know it.’ 

‘Perhaps in his own sons he thinks it...worse.’ Elrohir walked the chamber with long, rapid steps, halting in front of the stand of armour. ‘I have tried to have it beaten out of me.’ His head dropped. Tindómion stared at his straight back. 

‘Elrond  beat you?’ He was incredulous. 

‘What? No! No. I — you used to visit Lothlórien. Did you meet one called Haldir, one of their Marchwardens?’ 

‘Haldir,’ Tindómion repeated. ‘Yes, I have met him.’ Met him and disliked him. There was something both sly and pompous about that one. No doubt he was skilled at his task, but Tindómion had found him unpalatable. He had made some rather obvious overtures which Tindómion had rebuffed in no uncertain terms; he had met that kind of attitude before, a deep loathing of his father’s blood (no doubt emanating from Galadriel and Celeborn) mingled with a strange excitement at the thought of bedding with it. But Haldir was certainly not anyone Tindómion would so much as glance at. 

Elrohir tossed back the remainder of his wine. His mouth thinned from its modelled curves. 

‘He...there was a time he asked me to punish him for his...desires.’ The grey eyes looked otherwhere, into a place that shamed him. Tindómion refilled the empty glass, said nothing. 

‘...to whip him.’ 

‘Ah. One of those.’ Tindómion said calmly, which brought Elrohir’s eyes to his, a startled look in them. 

‘It is not so uncommon, I think. Some people do enjoy pain, it stimulates them sexually.’ But Haldir should never have asked Elrohir, tortured by the Laws and on that terrible inner rack, to do such a thing to him. 

‘I enjoyed it,’ Elrohir spat through his set teeth. ‘I asked him to do it to me, later.’ 

Their eyes held. It was important Elrohir see no disgust in Tindómion’s face and, in truth, any that he felt was for Haldir, not Elrohir. Unless it was rape, Tindómion cared nothing for how people got their pleasure. 

He said, ‘Haldir is no more ashamed of his desires than a Breeland tom-cat. He is Silvan, like Thranduil’s folk in the Great Wood, and I know well they have never followed the Laws.’ He remembered the last Winter Solstice in Mordor when, in defiance of the louring threat of Barad-dûr, the Elves had performed their dances. The Silvans had been wild that night and he? He could only give Gil-galad a little comfort.  And so little. I wanted to save him from my own lusts, not knowing he would die there...

‘Haldir tried to play the same game with me. No, I sent him off with a scorched brush. I saw nothing in him to want. But, Elrohir, there is nothing  wrong in such things. I never had the chance to explore my tastes with Gil-galad, but later, after he was dead...Sometimes we need to block out the pain with another kind of pain.’ 

Elrohir went still. ‘You, too?’ 

‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘in the years after...often. And now, at times, with those who understand, who carry their own pain. I do not believe Haldir does; he was not a good teacher if he left you feeling shamed. You need someone who understands you, or someone who is light of heart, who can turn your mind to joy.’ 

‘Joy.’ Elrohir pronounced it as if he spat gall. 

‘There may be great peace in it.’ 

‘You do not know, do you?’ 

‘I do not know. I choose my partners from among those who carry grief enough to burn down the world. Thus far.’ But perhaps it would indeed be pleasant to lay with one who bore no shadows, whose light could melt them away, someone as fair and fey and feral as the wood-Elves whom had danced under the red-black glower of Mordor. 

‘But your deeds are not ignoble,’ Istelion,’ Elrohir said as if determined that Tindómion should think ill of him. 

‘My deeds?’ He put up his brows. ‘Nothing done in war is noble, my friend. All violence, all hate, awakens our basest instincts.’

After Celebrían’s departure, Elrond’s sons had embarked on the path that gave them the name  Sons of Thunder , a terror to the orcs of the mountains, and Tindómion had joined with them willingly. Elrohir always left signs that they had passed: an orc, or more than one, impaled while alive, left in screaming agony until death came. Glorfindel did not join with them, though he slew orc and warg as violently as any. He had said, and once only, that he cared nothing for the orcs pain, but that he feared what the act itself would do to the perpetrator of it. 

Elrohir flinched. ‘You think me base?’ 

‘I called thee  friend, and so you are, and kin, too.’ He took Elrohir’s beautiful, blazing (tormented) face between his hands and rested their foreheads together. ‘I only say what is true for all of us. You are Finwëion, and far more so than your father. We are not so unalike.’ Drawing back, he cupped the wide shoulders. ‘As for base, if you knew the deaths I have given my father in thought — everything of the most vile.’ 

‘Even...rape?’ Elrohir whispered, eyes closed. 

It was Tindómion who flinched then. He said, dry-mounthed, ‘Even so.’ 

There was silence. The wind flurried along the balcony; the drapes billowed inward, and the flames leapt, whispering to one another in a language as old as the world. Slowly, Elrohir went to his knees, and Tindómion went with him. 

‘Elrohir, I wish you would unburden yourself, I wish —‘ 

‘I cannot.’ Almost inaudible, inflexible as iron. 

‘Elladan?’ 

‘My brother is a soul of purity and a comfort to me, I would not so sully him.’ The long lashes lifted. His eyes caught the firelight like a cat’s, but were backlit by a fire all his own. He burned too bright for this fading world, but it was a dark burning. 

‘You could never do that. Elladan would stand at your shoulder at the end of the world.’ He caught the lean, strong hands in his own, felt the sword callouses. ‘You think he has never felt what you — or I — feel? But Elrohir, what makes us different from orcs, is that we do not act on it. After battle, perhaps, if we find a willing partner.’ 

A quick head-shake. ‘I cannot,’ he said again. ‘I am too....’ He jerked his hands away, rose lithely to his feet. 

Tindómion watched him. He hurt for Elrohir, and for himself, not knowing how to reach him. If he only knew what rot savaged his soul... 

Tindómion knew the art of Ósanwe, although in these times few used it. He had learned it as a youth from Cirdán and perfected it with tuition from Glorfindel when he returned to Middle-earth. It could be dangerous; Elrohir had once said he hated Galadriel’s uninvited probes. Indeed she had tried to do the same to Tindómion although in justice to her, he thought she was trying to find out something about Maglor. Yet she had not asked, and he understood Elrohir’s anger. 

And so he would not try to look into Elrohir’s mind. It was not how Ósanwe should be used. One  invited another person in, indeed that was part of the training. 

And so...how to reach Elrohir, or even try? 

Tindómion said slowly, because time had not lessened the sickness he felt, the horror, the disgust: ‘I do know how it feels to rape.’ 

‘ What ?’ 

‘Courtesy of my dreams.’ He had told no-one save Glorfindel band Gil-galad of  that dream, coming upon him one stormy night in Ost-in-Edhil. ‘I have dreamed all Maglor’s life up to the time Maedhros threw himself into the fires of the Earth.’ After that nothing really, only glimpses, the sound of harping that faded when he woke. ‘But I did not dream  of him; I  was him. And so, at the Havens of Sirion, when he raped my mother...’ 

He felt Elrohir come closer, the strung tension in him, the shock. 

‘I did not rape her, but it _felt_ as if I did. And Maglor, he was half-insane with grief — Amrod and Amras had been slain — and the longer grief of his other brothers dying, his father...the hopelessness of the Oath, Elwing taking the Silmaril which the Oath bound them too, and more than that I think, because the Silmarils were not just jewels, they held something of Fëanor’s spirit. And there was battle-lust, yes, he was a superlative warrior and very good at killing. And so, out of all those emotions, he raped my mother, just because she was there, because she was trying to protect your father and Elros. There was no passion in it, only violence. An atrocity of war.’ He stared blindly across the room; a strip of his gleaming armour flashed back his reflection, bronze hair pulled back from a white face, eyes silver as the metal. His father’s face, save for the hair. He looked away. 

‘Whatever you dread, whatever you hate in yourself, you have done nothing, any-more than I have. And yet, as I know, our thoughts can be the deepest torture.’ 

Elrohir caught him in a hard embrace. Their hearts beat in thunderous tattoo. 

‘I do not want you to lose hope,’ Tindómion murmured. ‘To hate yourself.’ 

Elrohir’s fingers dug convulsively into his back. His breath hissed in his throat. 

‘What hope is there,’ he demanded, ‘for us? And how do you find something to hold on to?’ 

‘I do not have hope.’ Tindómion moved back to look into those flaming grey eyes. ‘That died in Mordor. There is no-one waiting for me in the West, Elrohir. The Oath, and the Valar have ensured the Doom played out to the bitterest end. No pity, no mercy. All I love now is here. You, your brother, Glorfindel, my mother, even Erestor,’ he added with a touch of humour, although Erestor had never been able to accept Tindómion’s hatred of Maglor, his oath to find and kill him. Erestor was unashamedly partisan toward the Fëanorions. The truce had come when he stopped talking about them, at least to Tindómion. 

‘ That is what I hold on to.’ 

‘And is it enough?’ 

‘Of course you are all enough,’ he smiled, aching, kissed Elrohir on the brow. 

‘I am not worth it, Istelion!’ But he did not pull away. 

‘You are.’ He tried to drive his conviction into Elrohir’s inward-burning soul. ‘And, though your father would disagree, and Mithrandir also, I think that sometimes we need a touch of darkness to fight the Dark.’ 

There was a howl in the chimney; the logs shed sparks. Elrohir said, ‘The wind has changed.’ 

‘Yes,’ Tindómion agreed. ‘It blows now from the East.’ 

OooOooO


End file.
